


Gorgonzola and Porcini Mushroom Risotto

by deathbycoldopen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Date, Fluff, Food, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:44:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathbycoldopen/pseuds/deathbycoldopen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's sudden desire to cook a complicated, fancy-ass meal has nothing to do with having dinner alone with Cas.  Nothing to do with it.  The risotto just looks really good, that's all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gorgonzola and Porcini Mushroom Risotto

It all started when Sam announced he was going on a camping trip with some people he met in town.  Dean gave him a hard time about it, teasing his brother ruthlessly- part of the job description, really- but secretly, he was glad to have a whole weekend to himself.

That is, he was glad until he realized that he wouldn't have the weekend with himself.  He would have the weekend with Cas.  Without Sam.  Just him and Cas in the bunker.  Alone.

At that point he tried very hard not to panic.

It was fine, he tried to reason with himself.  No big deal.  It wasn't like this was the first time he'd been alone with Cas since they officially accepted the former angel into their home.  And anyway, ever since Cas fell he'd spent most of his time either in his room, or perusing through the Men of Letters' vast library, occasionally making amused noises when he encountered something abjectly  _wrong_ in one of the books.  So a weekend alone with Cas really just meant that they would do exactly the same things they normally did, just without Sam doing the things  _he_ normally did to act as a buffer between Dean and the fluttery, nervous feeling he got whenever he and Cas were in the same room.  Dean could deal with not having Sam around for a weekend.  It was fine, no problem.  It was fine, dammit.

He spent the first hour after Sam left lounging in front of the TV he'd smuggled into the bunker when Sam had been on a run.  It was a nice TV, too, a 42 inch flatscreen with a package including all the good channels and all the unnecessary random ones as well.  It all looked great in HD, especially the cooking show he ended up watching on the Food Network.  Before long, he was taking notes on how to properly prepare a risotto dish without overcooking the rice, and then he was looking up the recipe they'd used on the show- gorgonzola and porcini mushroom risotto, apparently- in order to make a shopping list for tonight's dinner.

Not that his sudden desire to cook a complicated, fancy-ass meal had anything to do with having dinner alone with Cas.  Nothing to do with it.  The risotto just looked really good, that was all.

The store was a bit of a challenge.  He'd never cooked anything more elaborate than burgers- nice ones, but still.  Shopping for the ingredients for a burger didn't get much more complex than finding lettuce that wasn't wilted.  It took him nearly ten minutes to find the kind of rice that the risotto recipe called for, and nearly fifteen minutes to decide that it was _fine_ to buy the expensive rice instead of the Uncle Ben's instant crap, it wasn't like he couldn't get more money or anything.  Then the mushrooms gave him pause, because for some reason the labels were handwritten and therefore indecipherable, and how the hell was he supposed to know what porcini mushrooms looked like?

When the cart was filled with what he hoped were the right ingredients, he belatedly realized he couldn't serve _risotto_ with _beer_ , which was all they had back at the bunker.  Well, beer and whiskey, but he was pretty sure that Jack Daniels would go even worse with a nice meal than beer would.  Wine, that was what you were supposed to serve with fancy dinners, right?  He already had a bottle in the cart- one of the ingredients for the risotto- but he had a feeling he couldn't serve the five dollar bottle of wine with the meal.  He'd have to find something better.

He didn't even try to pick out the wine himself.  He asked the nearest employee what would go well with risotto, and blindly trusted their choice.  He never drank wine, anyway, he probably wouldn't even know the difference.  He just wanted to make sure it was something Cas would like.

Not that this was about Cas.

As he was getting in the checkout line, he paused, looking at the display of flowers.  Fancy dinners usually had flowers on the table, right?  Flowers, and candles, and nice silverware.  The candles they had, and he wasn't about to spend money on more silverware when they already had a perfectly functional- if a little plain- set back at the bunker.  But flowers, though, flowers weren't that expensive, and they'd make the table look nice along with the candles and the fancy-ass risotto and the wine.  He didn't really care about flowers, but he knew that Cas liked them, and this dinner was for both of them, so who was he to argue with that?

He picked out a colorful bouquet, and valiantly ignored the fact that this was starting to feel more and more like a date.

Back at the bunker, he began cooking.  The mushrooms took thirty minutes to cook, so he took the opportunity to set up one of the tables in the main room.  The candle holders were mismatched, and he'd forgotten to buy a vase for the flowers, but the tall glass didn't look too bad, and all in all the effect was rather nice.  Something like nervousness squirmed in his stomach as he admired the effect; he shoved it away, because this wasn't a date, so there wasn't anything to be nervous _about_.  This was just two friends enjoying a nice home-cooked meal together.  That was all.

The rice itself was much more difficult to deal with- the recipe warned that it was extremely easy to either overcook or undercook it.  He watched it like a hawk, adding the extra stock exactly when he was supposed to, not a moment sooner or later, and felt his nerves climbing a couple of notches with every passing minute.  What if he didn't do this right?  What if he'd bought the wrong ingredients, or got the wrong wine, or burned the risotto?  What if Cas didn't like mushrooms, or was allergic to the flowers, or hated the wine?  What if it was awkward, because they'd never done something like this before, and Dean couldn't think of anything to say, and they just sat there in silence while the food got cold and their friendship crumbled around them all because of some stupid risotto and a half-assed attempt to pretend this was a real home instead of just a hole in the ground with a few books and a tiny kitchen?

It was fine, he reminded himself.  Just two friends having dinner.  It wasn't a date, or anything important.  Just two friends, and an experiment in cooking.  No big deal.

The risotto was on the plates, the wine was poured, the candles were lit.  He took a deep breath and walked down the hall to Cas' room.  He had to swallow around the sudden dryness in his throat before he could lift his hand to knock.

"Yes?" Cas said, muffled through the door.

Dean pretended he wasn't practically hyperventilating as he opened the door.  "I, um," he said, then cleared his throat.  "There's dinner, if you want," he said, striving for casual and ending up a thousand miles off the mark.  Not a date, he reminded himself for the thousandth time.

Cas looked up from the book he was studying.  "I'm fine, thank you.  Maybe I'll have something later, I'm not hungry at the moment."

"Oh," Dean said.  This wasn't what he'd expected.  "Oh," he said again.  "Um.  Okay, I guess I'll just... Okay then."  He fumbled the door closed and made it almost out the hall before he had to stop and take a few more deep breaths.

He'd just asked Cas out on a date, and Cas had turned him down.

He probably should have seen it coming, he thought morosely as he trudged back to the main room.  The risotto smelled good, but he had no appetite for it now.  Not after Cas turned him down.  He wasn't good enough for Cas, _he_ knew that, but it still stung.  He wished he had asked Cas out before he made the risotto, though- now it was just going to go to waste, since Cas didn't want it and didn't want him and because of that Dean didn't want the risotto either and it was all Sam's fault for leaving him here alone with Cas so that he could do something stupid like ask Cas out on a date.  He looked at the nicely laid out table and wished he could make it disappear just by glaring at it.

"Dean?"

He whirled around, panicked.  Cas could have at least given him enough time to clear away his failure and wipe his embarrassingly tear-filled eyes before he snuck up on him.  Cas was looking at the table, his eyes wide.  "Cas," Dean said, not sure what he was going to say but knowing that he had to say something.  "I was gonna clear it- This isn't- You're not hungry," he finished, wincing at his eloquence.

Cas was still staring at the table laden with flowers and candles and home-made risotto for two.  "You did this?" he asked, ignoring Dean's incoherent ramblings.

"I- Yeah," Dean said.  "It was just- it was stupid, I'll put it away-"

"Dean."  Cas finally turned his eyes away from the table, only to fix them on Dean.  Dean found himself wishing that he'd look back at the evidence of his failure, because those eyes were way too blue and made his heart pound way too hard for him to handle on top of rejection.  It wasn't fair.  "Did you do this for me?"

Dean thought about lying, but he was nodding before he could think of something.  "I just thought, with Sam gone, I thought..." he told the floor by Cas' feet.

"Dean, was this... was this a date?"

Dean closed his eyes.  "It's fine, Cas," he said hurriedly.  "You don't want to, so I'll just get rid of it, it's no big deal-"

The scrape of a chair interrupted him.  He opened his eyes to find that Cas was no longer standing in front of him; he was pulling out a chair and giving him a pointed look.  "Well?" Cas asked him.  "The food's getting cold."

Dean stared at him stupidly for a second.  "I thought you weren't hungry," he said.

Cas rolled his eyes.  "My date just made me risotto, and I want to eat it," he said.  "Now sit."

A warm feeling filled Dean's chest.  He smiled and walked over to his seat, feeling lightheaded when Cas gave him an answering smile.  A date with Cas.  He was on a date with his best friend, with candles and flowers and homemade risotto, and it was perfect

The risotto turned out to be delicious; and when he leaned in after dinner was over, he could still taste it on Cas' lips.


End file.
